The first thing I noticed at last weekend's VRLA, billed as "the world's largest immersive technology festival", were the piles of face masks available on a table at the expo's front door: VR condoms, basically, designed to quickly slip on and off, apparently to prevent the spread of germs inevitably caused by hundreds of people sharing the same VR headsets -- or at the very least, distributed to allay concerns about catching the dread "VR herpes".
The second thing I noticed: Dang, this place sure feels kinda empty.
That reaction is partly due to the fact that VRLA takes place in the same conference center as the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- an insane information overload exploding with light, noise, and hordes of game geeks. It's hard not to compare and contrast, and feel how far behind VR is trailing in consumer interest, in relation to next gen gaming.
This isn't to say VRLA attendance was sparse. During a visit on Saturday afternoon, the expo floor was fairly busy, and there were long lines at several select demos. But that also pointed out a larger problem:
The longest VRLA line by far was for the Birdly simulator, which is understandable, because who doesn't want to fly like a frickin' bird? But the thing is, as a veteran VR developer attending the conference reminded me, Birdly has been around for about four years. It's quite possible I missed it, but I genuinely struggled to find an expo demo that represented a major breakthrough, a genuinely new application of VR/AR technology, or that screamed "killer app". (With the possible exception of Beat Saber, which attracted a decent crowd.) Along with Birdly, the most popular booths by far were for installation-specific VR experiences -- boxing, archery, multiplayer shooters, etc. -- the kind of thing you'd enjoy at a theme park or arcade-type venue. Which is totally fine and fun, but perhaps a bit less ambitious an application than what many of us were hoping for.
I hesitate to make this perspective too definitive -- it's just one attendees' point of view -- but while attending a great after-party with my friend Tameka Kee, I took an informal poll of other VRLA attendees, and their opinion was roughly the same: A sense the conference lacked a breakthrough or a burst of new innovation. What is definitely true is this: VR headset sales remain slow, and small in comparison with videogame consoles, let alone gaming PCs. Until the differential improves, we should expect a sense of stasis.
We've nailed sensor tracking, the only way to "make VR better" at this point is to get higher resolution, greater field of view, and lighter headsets.
Everything else is just making software.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Tuesday, May 08, 2018 at 11:41 AM